Thinking about communication at the beginning? What a novel idea!

Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Communications Network Fall 2013 Annual Conference conference with the help of a blog team.  This is a guest post by  Lori McClung, President of Advocacy & Communication Solutions.  Follow Lori on Twitter – @mclorius.

In most of the sessions I attended at the Communication Network conference in New Orleans, funders and communication professionals alike shared one similar sentiment – building communication into the fabric of their work at the outset was key to their success. Each presenter said it in a slightly different way but the result was always the same: if you plan for it (communication) the people you want to help/the goal you want to achieve will be accomplished.

As a communication professional I agree wholeheartedly. But I kept thinking to myself that many of the people who needed to hear the presentations were not in attendance at the conference. I’m left wondering if we can somehow package the information we all learned (or approaches that just were reinforced) and could somehow share them with those who are not the true believers.

In each organization that skeptic may sit in a different seat (board member, executive director, or whomever). What if they heard the same message over and over again from different people? Perhaps the third party validation would change the culture of an organization – or at least encourage them to think about communication early, rather than last, in at least one project. That success would lead to another success and so on and so on.

We can work together to develop some innovative ways to share what we heard without asking colleagues to read a PowerPoint presentation; it’s the back and forth discussion that they need to hear after all. For those organizations that don’t have 5 internal communication staff and $1 million to spend on a project, we can also figure out how to translate those large scale successes to smaller initiatives.

Great examples of building in communication at the beginning included The Atlantic Philanthropies who used communication assistance as early as the RFP development process in their effort to demonstrate how older adults can lead local change in all types of communities to the Ford Foundation which invested in two years of in-depth message research and development to change the dialogue about economic inequality in America. There are great case studies – and we can use them to help more people to see that while it may not always be easy, integrating communication at the very beginning is the smart thing to do. Every great idea starts with a question and conversation. How do we get this discussion going? How do you think we can get other people on the board? I would love to hear what successes or challenges you’ve had in integrating and embedding communication right from the start? Ready, go!

Ich Bin Ein Communicator?

Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Communications Network Fall 2013 Annual Conference conference with the help of a blog team.  This is a guest post by  Bill Wright, Vice President, Outreach and Advocacy at America’s Promise Alliance.  Follow along on twitter – @americaspromise or @APA_wright.

How many people at your organization and your grantees would feel justified in saying, “I’m a communicator”?[1]

The last two years of the Fall conference has made me think about that question a number of times.  While I have no idea what the answer is, what’s encouraging is that more and more people are aiming to make that statement.

One session that approached expanding communication capacity last year was a great breakout called “Can Foundations Train Their Grantees to Be Effective Communicators?” Leading it were two people from the Hewlett Foundation, communications director Eric Brown and performing arts program officer Julie Fry.  As Eric pointed out in his introduction, the foundation had for years provided its grantees communications strategy training.  The problem: it didn’t know if this program did any good.

After an evaluation demonstrated how to improve the training, the foundation developed a simple set of tools that generated illuminating data its program officers can use to monitor and evaluate their grantees’ communications strategies. In the session, Eric and Julie offered a case study of how a program officer, a grantee and a methodology came together to integrate communications into program evaluation.

At the end of this year’s conference, another breakout examined how to make more people strong communicators. “Transformative Capacity Building Models: Strengthening Grantee Communications Skills Beyond Funding” featured a first-rate lineup: Michael Hoffman of See3; , author and trainer Beth Kanter; Eva Penar from The Chicago Community Trust; and Farra Trompeter of Big Duck. They discussed a range of techniques for building communications capacity, including management assistance programs, peer-learning cohorts, train-the-trainers and grant-supported training.

One particularly valuable part of this session was how it considered how to make sure these efforts pay lasting benefits. For example, Farra noted that the person who gets training might leave the organization, so they have insisted on having two people from grantees attend, so that the knowledge survives any single departure. Michael pointed out one great way to offset the reluctance of program staff to participate in communications training: align the training with ongoing program initiatives.

But it wasn’t just these two sessions were encouraging signs of a commitment to extending communications skill past the communications department. Other breakouts shows multiple examples of how communications staff are working to connect, early and often, with program officers and grantees.

The many sessions that centered on social media made a similar point about how everyone can be a communicator.  Because of the ease of contributing to the dialogue online, especially through Twitter, the opportunities for program staff to support outreach efforts have never been greater. And like so many things, once program staff get involved – both posting and reading responses – they’re much more likely to appreciate the importance of communications.

There’s still lots of room for improvement, both for how program officers communicate and how communications staff work with program officers.  But it’s exciting to see that both groups are converging, moving towards having all people in an organization able to communicate the power of its work.

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[1] In case you’re wondering, John F. Kennedy did not say, in fact, that he was a jelly donut in 1963 when he used that construction in Berlin.  Since he was speaking figuratively, he was grammatically correct.

Confronting the Coming World

Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Communications Network Fall 2013 Annual Conference conference with the help of a blog team.  This is a guest post by  Dan Brady, Communications Manager at the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers.  Follow along on Twitter – @givingforum.

During his plenary, David Simon of “The Wire” and “Treme” told a story about working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom at the advent of the internet. He described an editor telling writers how kids would “surf the web” and upon finding the Baltimore Sun’s website, they’d discover that they loved newspapers and start buying them.

The assumptions behind that business model for newspapers in the digital age were, of course, hopelessly flawed. Ken Auletta of The New Yorker echoed Simon’s take on the collapse of the newspaper industry saying, “Traditional media didn’t confront the coming world.” It failed to invest in engineers, web developers, and others who could provide the underpinning platform for the news outlets of the Twenty-first century.

These comments got me thinking about how philanthropy takes change head-on. From the rise of digital culture to shifting demographics, our world is always changing. Foundations and the non-profits they support are at the forefront, trying to make sense of it all, finding new ways to navigate issues.

As communication professionals, our challenge is to develop messages that reflect and convey both the changing landscape and the good work being done to address the needs of those we serve. There are times that we get both wrong, like the editor in Simon’s tale, but philanthropy is uniquely positioned not only to get a birds-eye-view of an issue, but also to learn from our mistakes, correct our assumptions, and keep trying.

Simon encouraged us to “Tell the real.” We need to be able to find authentic stories to advance our missions and show how our organizations are investing in the solutions we need to confront the coming world.

Permission to be Authentic

Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Communications Network Fall 2013 Annual Conference conference.  This is a guest post by Betsey Russell, Owner Last Word, LLC.   Follow Betsey on Twitter – @BetseyPR.

Two of the overarching themes at the Communications Network conference just concluded in New Orleans were the elements of creating good stories and the importance of amplifying them.  It makes perfect sense. A beautiful, compelling story unshared is a wasted opportunity. And a poorly told or meaningless story that’s pushed out there to millions is a complete waste of time.

Grantmaker conferences and articles over the past couple of years have been rich with advice and wisdom about how to craft a compelling narrative to further worthwhile causes. But some of the best advice I’ve heard recently came from two separate ComNet keynotes, David Simon and Maria Hinojosa — be authentic.

Sounds great, especially when coming from folks in mass media, but what does that mean for an individual storyteller like me, or institutional storytellers like the foundations I work with?

This is the uncomfortable part. Authenticity means stripping down the trappings of propriety, correctness and yes, even brand, to get to the basic humanity within the story you want to tell.  It means showing at least a little bit of who you really are, by showing why you care about something or someone in your story.

For the vast majority of folks who work in private philanthropy, this is an intimidating – if not downright terrifying – concept. Exposing our true thoughts and formative experiences to our peers would be akin to running stark naked across the stage during the next conference’s keynote address.

“Besides,” we’re quick to point out, “As funders, it’s not our own story that we really want to tell, but the stories of our grantees. Yes, yes. That’s it. They are the ones whose stories we wish to amplify!”

Good point. But here’s a challenge to consider: Suppose I dangled a huge check above your head and said, “This is meant for you, because I like what I’ve seen so far. But now, I want you to show me your purest and truest self. Oh, and if I like that, I want to share it with the world.”

How authentic would you dare to be? When compensation and acceptance are so rarely tied to true authenticity, how likely are any of us to tell the stories in our hearts versus the stories we’ve shaped to impress?

Authenticity requires a great deal of permission — from ourselves, from our peers, from those who support us. Creating that permissive environment doesn’t happen with the wave of a wand. It takes a great deal of trust, positive reinforcement, honesty, and mutual sharing of selves. It takes risk on all sides.

So, is true authenticity worth it? Is it something we can actually attain? These are the questions I’m pondering in the wake of ComNet 2013.

What do you think?

The Luxury of Time

Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Communications Network Fall 2013 Annual Conference conference with the help of a blog team.  This is a guest post by Liz Banse, Vice President at Resource Media.  Follow Liz on Twitter – @LizBanse.

In a conversation with fellow conference attendee Kathleen Hennessy in the cab on the way to the airport on Friday, we had a good laugh over the similarities between her job as a professional photographer and my temporary gig as a blogger for the Communications Network conference. Quite simple, it is this: when Kathleen is on assignment, she is always alert, aware of her surroundings, looking for the “perfect moment.” So, too, for me, as I went into every session of the conference on the lookout for material for that ever elusive blog post.

I dutifully took notes – hoping for inspiration to strike – during David Simon’s talk, during Maria Hinojosa’s talk, during Ken Auletta’s talk and, you get the picture, during every session I attended. Auletta provided the spark for the recurring theme I was looking for, some connection – or connecting of the dots – between the different speakers.

Sure, storytelling was a recurring theme. No surprise there, we’re a bunch of communicators. But, what popped for me was the repetition among these very gifted storytellers of the necessity of – or desire for – time. Time to find a good story, or the right story, or to simply let a story reveal itself.

Auletta talked about the luxury of time that he had as a writer for the New Yorker. It was very clear how much he valued this in allowing him to really think through how he should tell the story. What storytelling device he might use for the story he wanted to tell. Who the “best” character for the story might be.

I thought back to Hinojosa. Her stories weren’t always one-shot deals. She would come back to a person or a family time and time again. She had the luxury of not having to start and end within, say, a grant period. Simon, as well, talked about how lucky he was (“because I don’t have a good imagination,” he said, which made me chuckle) to be embedded in a homicide unit for an entire year when he wrote his best-selling book, Homicide. The story, the details, the characters, emerged over time.

The Shoeshine Man at the Roosevelt Hotel. We all walked past him at some point during the conference, but how many of us slowed down and stopped to talk to him to hear his story? Photo credit: Kathleen Hennessy, pictureWORLDhope

Good storytelling can take time. Which brings me full-circle back to Kathleen and the taxi ride to the airport. On Wednesday afternoon, Kathleen, Nicole Lampe and I led a pre-conference workshop on visual storytelling. As a professional photographer, Kathleen is a storyteller as well. One of her pleas during our workshop was that anyone in the audience considering hiring a professional photographer to tell their grantees’ stories give them time – three days instead of three hours. Time to be a fly on the wall. Time to allow them to get to know the people they are filming, just talking, without a camera on them. In the process, the characters will reveal themselves and, of course, the story will reveal itself. Then, the photographer will know what photos will truly tell the story of their subject.

In this harried 24/7, all digital, all right-right-now world we work in, it’s a good reminder. Some of the best stories need old-fashioned time for the storyteller and their subject to connect.

Storytelling with a purpose

Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Communications Network Fall 2013 Annual Conference conference with the help of a blog team.  This is a guest post by Nicole Lampe, Head of Digital Team at Resource Media.  Follow Nicole on Twitter – @nicole_amber.

Logging into the Dallas airport WiFi on the way home from New Orleans, I was forced to watch a 16 second cereal commercial that ended with an invitation to share my story on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. The commercial’s message was, “Some things, like how the baby got into your belly, are hard for kids to digest. But Rice Krispies is #easytodigest.”

From what I can tell, the idea here is to get moms to bond with the brand by talking about kids’ tough questions. Naturally, Kellogg’s kicked the campaign off with a Twitter party hosted by mommy bloggers, and is featuring tough questions on both its website and Pinterest board.

Kellogg’s is doing a few things right. As the smart folks from GMMB and Flow Nonfiction noted in Thursday’s “Make me care” session, the best digital stories are authentic, co-created, and platform opportunistic.

They’re trying for co-creation, even offering prizes for those participating in the Twitter chat. They’re working every social media platform. But the campaign hasn’t picked up much steam that I can see because it doesn’t offer anything customers need. It’s all about feeding Rice Krispies’ content machine rather than facilitating real connections between moms.

Contrast this with AARP’s work on social security. AARP is gathering stories to help members make good decisions about when to start collecting, and to advocate for ongoing benefits. Members are happy to share their stories because they see the purpose behind AARP’s ask.

While companies like Kellogg’s might have more resources than most mission-driven organizations, we have a competitive advantage: purpose. Kellogg’s is using stories to sell, but groups like AARP use them to serve.

That doesn’t make every nonprofit story campaign a winner. In order to elicit authentic stories, and drive social sharing, the end game has to be apparent from the start.

Your grantees’ supporters are savvy. They will show up for causes when they believe their actions will make a difference. And that means every story campaign needs two things: a clear path to change, and a foundation of trust.

It’s the story, stupid!

Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Communications Network Fall 2013 Annual Conference conference with the help of a blog team.  This is a guest post by Liz Wainger, President of The Wainger Group.  Follow Liz on Twitter – @lizwainger.

In the days leading up to the Fall Communications Conference, I was looking forward to reconnecting with friends, checking the pulse of what my colleagues are wrestling with in their work, and learning a few new tricks.  And the conference did not disappoint.  But what I was  struck by most was the consistent theme in the plenaries and break outs that I attended: story matters.

Despite all of the new and exciting, wiz bang platforms that allow us to communicate with more people, more rapidly across the globe, good old fashioned skills to build a narrative, develop characters and put our narrative within some broader context are at the core of getting our grantees, our politicians, and our philanthropic colleagues to engage in our struggle to bring about social change.

The last few years has seen a relentless emphasis on data.  To be sure, data is an essential part of story telling, but without a narrative you simply have data – no passion, no call to action, no inspiration.  And without data, you have raw emotion hanging in the wind.

The plenary sessions each featured remarkable story tellers.  David Simon, creator of “The Wire” and now “Treme”, showed us that we can bring to light overwhelming and complex issues with story. If you thought that “The Wire” was only a great crime drama, you would be wrong.  It was, he said, the story of “diminution of labor in an American economy that no longer needs massive amounts for workers.” In that series, he revealed the “The Corner,” the only factory in urban neighborhoods where many urban youth can find work, which is unfortunately, selling drugs. “One America is trying to teach the other to ‘just say no,’ but what should I say yes to when only one factory is hiring and it’s the corner,” he said. “The Wire” brought the streets of Baltimore and the pain and struggles of its youth into our living rooms.  The series entertained but it also highlighted the complex forces at work in our cities and in our society and put a face on urban poverty.

Reporter and NPR host Maria Hinajosa spoke about the power of story to make issues and people who are otherwise invisible, visible.  Holding up a Time Magazine, she expressed her anger and sadness that the photo for a cover story on the Class of 2025 had no Latinos in it because they are invisible to the mainstream media. She looks for their stories everywhere—from the woman who sells coffee from a food truck outside her office to the STEM sisters, a group of young Latinas studying environmental science. In telling these stories, she hopes to make Latinos visible and to change the narrative.

“See if you can find the stories around you. Make people feel because if you feel, you might be moved to action, human action,” she urged.

Author Junot Diaz reminded us of the importance of injecting play as well as information and stickiness into our storytelling.  It is the play piece that allows the audience to make the story its own.  He also noted that “nothing is more alien than universal writing.”  Specificity makes the message more human and, therefore, more likely that people will connect to it.  We all know the importance of targeting our audiences but Diaz framed it extremely well.  “My strategic audience is my mold to make the sculpture.  The real audience is the people who come to see the sculpture.”

The conference also had some great sessions that offered some practical tips about how to tell stories more effectively, from digital storytelling to affect change to shaping messages using research to finding the right language.  Hinajosa said she has banned the word illegal from her discussions of immigration reform.  Why? Because Eli Wiesel once remarked that the Nazis had made the Jews an illegal people with horrific results.

Doug Hattaway and his team showed us the power of investing the time in research to understand attitudes and then using a disciplined process to build on that research to craft messages that can help shift the frame on which people see an issue.  Language is critical, urged us to wage  war on jargon.   Use words that people can see rather than only think about.  Instead of talking about programs, we should talk about tools.  Instead of talking about the source of problem, talk about the root.  And instead of talking about populations, talk about people.

At the end of the day, the big a-ha for me was that as communicators we bring great gifts to our organizations, grantees and clients every day.  We help them see the world and the issues through a different lens.  And we are highly skilled in capturing and conveying the aspirations of the people we serve to the audiences that matter.   Let’s not get overwhelmed by the dizzying pace of change and the array of new communications platforms and apps emerging every day. Let’s continue to do what we do best: guide our organizations and grantees in telling great stories that tap into emotion to inspire and motivate.

Perspective from DownUnder

Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Communications Network Fall 2013 Annual Conference conference with the help of a blog team.  This is a guest post by Avalee Weir, Communications Manager at The Ian Potter Foundation.  Follow along on Twitter – @AvWeir and @IanPotterFdn.

As an Aussie attending her first international philanthropy communications conference, I arrived in New Orleans with a few extra baggage items:

– a truckload of baseball caps, Gap kids gear, Nike shoes and other assorted ‘cheaper in America’ items picked up during my stopover in LA

– jet lag (and the need to keep on top of my job back home at night while you were all asleep)

– high expectations and hopes that the long journey to get here would be worth it

– a little trepidation that the communications work we have been doing in the much smaller Australian philanthropic sector would seem a bit second rate.

Extra baggage can really weigh you down!

While I will be taking home the baseball caps for my kids and worse jet lag (as well as a cute little Halloween fascinator I picked up on Royal St), I am delightfully and liberatingly free of the other two items.

The Conference has certainly met my expectations. I expected to be inspired. I expected to meet great people who are doing smart things. I expected to be informed, entertained and engaged.  I expected relevant, forward thinking ideas and to learn new ways of tackling the old issues of audience engagement, communicating our messages, and telling our stories.  All of these were met. Hooray!

Suzanne Doig (left) and Avalee Wier on Bourbon St.

Some other things were less expected.

As I reflected on the content and topics we have covered, I was reminded afresh of the increasing diversity of skills and knowledge required to have a fully stocked communications tool box these days.  Certainly for those of us who started in PR roles in the days of faxes and stuffing envelopes, the evolution of our role as communicators has been dramatic.  Many of us at this conference need to be jacks of all trades. We are multimedia content producers, photographers, videographers, copywriters, online distribution experts, and web content managers while tweeting, texting, and reporting – all achieved in line with our thoughtful and cunning communications strategy, which will ensure our story doesn’t just add to all the noise.

Right?

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed! So many possibilities, opportunities and expectations…

So what I loved about this conference –  almost as much as the great ideas, the inspirational plenary speakers and the new insights – was the refreshing candour and honesty with which others shared their questions, doubts, queries, stuff-ups and uncertainties.  This open sharing means that in addition to taking away a treasure trove of information and some great new contacts and connections, I also leave with some reassurance.

As Junot Diaz, said in answer to a question, ‘Without your sense of community, it’s your isolation that devours you.’  So its really nice to know that despite our geographic isolation, and the fact that there’s just a small handful of communications professionals working in Australian philanthropy, we’re not alone in the challenges we face.  And now we have a whole new network of peers to call on for information and advice.

So as I put on my new storytellers hat and go home to Melbourne, I also reflect on the comments of Ken Aulette and leave [absolutely fabulous] New Orleans ‘leaning forward and looking for solutions’.

Thank you all for the warm welcome and generous hospitality you have shown me and my fellow Aussie communicator, Suzanne Doig. If you ever find yourself DownUnder we would love to return the favour.

Tips on Framing your Messages to Change the World

Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Communications Network Fall 2013 Annual Conference conference with the help of a blog team.  This is a guest post by Norris West, Director of Strategic Communications at The Annie E. Casey Foundation.  Follow Norris on Twitter – @NorrisWest.

This is my second Communications Network conference, and there is little doubt that I will return for a third. The plenary sessions, workshops and networking are feeding my appetite for the interactions that will send me back to Baltimore full of ideas.

My conference experience started with a pre-conference workshop, Data-Driven Communications: Analytics/Tools for Strategic Planning, Message Development and Evaluation. To be honest, the session wasn’t exactly what I had expected. As communications professionals, we face the constant challenge of identifying the right metrics to show how successful we are at engaging target audiences. So I signed up for the conference, led by Hattaway Communications, to find the Holy Grail for measuring communications results with precision.

Yes, there was some discussion of evaluation, but a wonderful session on framing messaging, changing attitudes and using data to understand which ideas are trending in the media. The presenters provided excellent tools such as its “road map to impact” that showed a five-step process on motivating people to take action. To get there, the Hattaway presenters said, our audiences must:

1. Be aware of the need. Effective communications can accomplish that by telling people something that is both surprising and relevant, moving them from unawareness to awareness;
2. Care about the cause. Our job is to connect to people’s hopes, values and emotions;
3. Understand the problem and solution. Use metaphors, personification and other devices that help people relate to the cause;
4. Feel a sense of urgency. We must be clear about what we’re asking people to do and make it simple, and even fun, to get them from apathy to urgency; and
5. Know how to help. We have to show people how they can go from just supporting our cause to taking action around it.

The session provided a wealth of other keen insight. One example: Hattaway worked with the Obama campaign and shaped the debate over the debt ceiling by advising supporters to stop the words “debt ceiling,” which resonated negatively with the public. Using “winning words” – in this case “default” – set a different context. As individuals, we wouldn’t want to default on our mortgages, and as a nation, we also need to be responsible and not default on our obligations.

That was good stuff. The session provided a great start to the conference, although I continue to seek better quantitative and qualitative performance measurements for our work.

On Day Two of the conference, there were more good workshops, but the most interesting thing for me was a revelation of why I find working as a philanthropic communicator so rewarding. I had a hallway conversation with Fred Mann, who had conducted the morning plenary session interview of David Simon, my former colleague at The Baltimore Sun (and brilliant creator of one of television’s best-ever shows, The Wire.) I wanted to ask Mann about his approach to interviewing Simon, and that eventually led to a good discussion about our everyday work.

Mann is associate vice president for communications at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. We reminisced about our days working at strong newspapers and concluded that in at least one very significant way, our former profession shares something in common with our current jobs.

“We went into journalism because we wanted to change the world,” Mann said. We agreed that in our current roles, we have the privilege of working through philanthropy to make the kind of changes we pursued while working in journalism.

Indeed, we are fortunate to work in a field where we can help shape the lives of children, families and communities – no matter whether we operate on a local level, nationally or internationally. It is empowering, and it carries enormous responsibility. Instead of working in journalism, we find ourselves working with journalism. In his talk, Simon didn’t have any particular suggestions for how philanthropy can make a bigger difference, other than his the good suggestion that foundation boards include people whose problems we seek to address. I think we can make a difference, and sometimes philanthropy provides breakthrough results, although they are still hard to see when so many children and families continue to catch hell.

And maybe that is why Jim Casey, the founder of our philanthropy, said we must always carry a sense of “constructive dissatisfaction.” When the need remains so great, we can’t afford to become complacent and be too proud of our accomplishments. We have the power to make a difference, so it is important for us to keep striving to get better. Changing the world has never been easy, but it helps to aspire to the same goals that inspired me as a young newspaper reporter. This conference provides many of the tools that help.

5 Ways to Hit your Social Media Stride

Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Communications Network Fall 2013 Annual Conference conference with the help of a blog team.  This is a guest post by  Elizabeth R. Miller, Communications Associate at the Knight Foundation.  Follow Elizabeth on Twitter – @elzbthmllr.

What keeps foundations and nonprofits from hitting their stride on social media? It’s actually a variety of factors, according to a session at this week’s Communications Network conference in New Orleans.

For example, it might be an organization’s cultural aversion to experimentation. Or it might be a lack of staff expertise to carry out a successful social media strategy. A lack of buy-in from senior staff and leadership was a much-cited problem. In some cases, it could be an outdated social media policy that discourages individuals to tweet content relative to their jobs.

Photo courtesy Flickr user Jason Howie

After identifying some of the barriers, breakout groups got to work brainstorming how to overcome the more common stumbling blocks.

Below are five tips that surfaced during the afternoon:

1. Content is king. Focus on it: A social media strategy shouldn’t be any different than the rest of an organization’s communications strategy. You can’t be good on social media unless you have good content to share. It can come from lots of places: your staff, your grantees or even a peer foundation.
2. Involve program staff, early and often: Show them the benefits of being active on a social network and be willing to meet them where they are. Be patient and help them look for ways to contribute original content to share.  An e-mail they wrote to their boss, or a grant write-up they recently wrote could easily be turned into blog posts that can be shared across many social media platforms. If they’re strapped for time ask if they’re willing to do a five minute sit-down with you that you can then upload as a podcast or set to photos of a relevant project.
3. Identify your audience and where they’re active: Find out where the people are you want to reach and know what you want to say to them. Don’t feel pressured to focus on one social media tool versus another just because someone else does. Try not to get caught up in the “next big thing.” If you know your network isn’t active on Pinterest, don’t create an account that’s going to languish.
4. Make the best of limited resources: If you are strapped for time (and who isn’t), smart small and plan to scale up later after you know what’s working. It’s better to do one or two things well than to spread yourself too thin.
5. Use metrics: Keep track of what’s working in your social media efforts to help you determine what to do more. Or less of. Share it with staff since it can be a good way to get more buy-in from people who may be on the fence about being more social. Sometimes it can be as simple as showing a program person who tweeted their blog post, or that a blog post they wrote was the second highest viewed piece of content on your website this week.

While breakout groups spent time tackling these issues and others, they certainlyaren’t topics that could be covered in an afternoon. To that end, we hope conversation was only the beginning of a richer and ongoing conversation.

As a group we will continue our monthly check-in chats to dive deeper into some of these topics. We’ll also continue our “social media collective” listserve for people to ask questions and others to offer insight (get in touch with us if you want to sign-up).

It is our hope that as a group we can share lessons in what’s working in social media and brainstorm ways to combat what’s not throughout the year. If you want to join us, please get in touch with any of us from the panel. You can find me on Twitter at @elzbthmllr or via e-mail at miller(at)knightfoundation.org.

We look forward to continuing the conversation beyond New Orleans!